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~ a new kind of book blog ~

Hello, and welcome back! For today's recap, we'll cover...Day 2 of BEA: And So It Begins...
Thursday was the first day of the actual exhibition. We started the morning at the Harlequin Teen BEA Book Blogger Breakfast, where we had the chance to meet and chat with other YA bloggers and authors. The featured authors were Jennifer Armentrout, Alexandra Adornetto, Robin Talley, Julie Kagawa, and Adi Alsaid, all representing their new books. (Harlequin Teen was kind enough to provide a goodie bag with their new titles inside—thank you so much!—so I'm looking forward to reading all of them!)

Harlequin Teen BEA Book Blogger Breakfast

After each other introduced him or herself and their book, they round robined around the room with the authors moving from table to table to chat with the blogger attendees. During this time, Christina and I met and briefly chatted with Not Yet Read's Tabitha and Book Swarm's Mary, along with two other BEA veterans, and The YA Kitten's Ashleigh Paige, whom we met that morning in the lobby of our hotel.

Our point of entry to the BEAshowfloor

Now, my mother calls it "delicate," I call it a "mood," but I was, as most people call it, kind of grumpy Thursday morning. Christina and I got up around 6:30, and after two nights of not-enough-sleep, I wasn't exactly awake enough to make new friends. Usually, I am quiet and terse in my replies, which makes many think I am angry or mean, so I wasn't altogether pleased at this point in my BEA experience. I was starting to feel overwhelmed by the idea of having to meet so many new people and make smalltalk with all of them (a feat for me even when I am not running on 4-5 hours of sleep, two nights in a row) and to talk to so many authors and have pertinent, interesting, unique questions for all of them. Zodiac signing (I also snagged a copy of Meg Wolitzer's Belzhar and Jandy Nelson's I'll Give You the Sun, which someone had just laid on a random table) and then go to our first (and really only) panel, the YA Buzz Books Panel, I found myself pleasantly surprised. Chitchatting with fellow book lovers wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be.
However, after grumping (me, that is, not Christina) out of the Harlequin Teen Breakfast at 9am to attend Romina Russell's

As is usually the case, I finally woke up at 9, right about the time I met Kamilla, an assistant editor from Paper Lantern Lit, who sat down at our table. Now, I have been a fan of PLL since I learned about them the summer before my senior year. Quite frankly, I think the entire concept of the boutique is amazing, and I would probably sell my first and second born children to work there—it is, without question, my dream job. So having noticed the publisher on her badge, I perked right up and began peppering Kamilla with questions. I feel the need now to apologize, because my excitement likely got the better of me, but Kamilla was so nice, and we had a really wonderful and easy conversation. Maybe this meeting new people thing wouldn't be so bad after all!

The Buzz Panel was interesting, featuring the editors of The Jewel, Lies We Tell Ourselves, The Walled City, I'm Glad I Did, and King Dork Approximately. Each editor spoke a bit about their initial impressions of the book when the manuscript first crossed their desk and then talked extensively of reasons why they were sure readers would love it. And I have to admit, every one of them did a great job selling their books to me. Afterwards, there was a mad dash/mass chaos/a miniature version of the apocalypse as everyone in the room made for the galley table. I got stuck handing books back to people for a time, with my own books tucked precariously under my arm, and then pinned to the wall a time longer as I had tried to make an escape. This was the taste of war I had been preparing myself for. (It ended up pretty much being the only one though.)

Mildly terrified, but triumphant, Christina and I scamped away from the Buzz Panel room to the exhibit floor, ready to start on our list of must-haves and if-time-allows. As we were making the rounds to pick up galley sheets from the various publisher booths, we were standing in the HarperCollins booth when I noticed one of the books advertised on the wall was one Christina had either wanted or mentioned or something. For whatever reason, I felt the need to point it out to her, which is what I was doing when one of the HC representatives stepped out from behind a table with a "Line Starts Here" sign and started the line right in front of us. Confused, Christina and I had no idea what was going on, and in going with the flow we accidentally ended up cutting the line waiting for the ARCs for Falling Into Place, Positive, Anatomy of a Misfit, and one other that I don't remember because I didn't get it. To those people, if you are reading this, I just want to say I am so sorry. It was not our intention to cut people, we were total n00bs, and if it had computed fast enough what exactly was going on, we would have gone to the end of the line, but as it was, I'm sure we just came off as jerks. Sorry, sorry, sorry!

After that, we headed to the A.S King signing. While Christina waited in line, I finished the galley drop page rounds and stopped by the NYU Graduate School table to learn a little bit more about the Publishing Masters degrees available at the school, then popped over to Candlewick to grab a galley of Egg and Spoon for my bestie who couldn't make it. By the time I returned to Christina, she had made some wonderful friends, Alexis from Alexis Adores Books, and Z, a teen library for a local NYC library. We had a great time chatting until the signing, where I snagged another book for B, and then split from Christina again. She went to wait in Melissa Marr's Made for You signing line, while I popped over to Penguin to grab her a copy of Belzhar and I'll Give You the Sun. They was already a line forming, and as I waited, I met some cool ladies, two of whom ran a book club together, and the other of whom is a blogger. We didn't exchange cards though, so I'm afraid my old lady memory has eaten up their names. One of the book club gals was named Olivia though. I remember that. Anyway, I grabbed the galleys for Christina and B and then hustled back to the Melissa Marr line just in time. Christina was only three people from entered the sacred cordoned off area.

After getting a signed copy of Made for You, we headed over to The Iron Trial galley drop, and so began the afternoon of running around for galleys. We met UK blogger, Caroline, from Big Book, Little Book and also met up with Sarcasm and Lemons' CJ, a blogger friend of Christina's. From there, the three of us headed to HC for TheQueen of the Tearling, but the ARC was out, unfortunately. Christina did manage to leave her card (my card) though after the rep played a slight joke on her. ;) We headed from HC to Simon & Schuster for the Black Ice and Afterworlds galley drop, and while we were able to get Black Ice, we were told that the Afterwords drop had been rescheduled for 9am Friday morning. Why, cruel publisher?! The last stop of the day was Bloomsbury for the secret YA giveaway that turned out to be a Throne of Glass tote and a The Mime Order sampler. Everyone was pretty happy about that, but seeing as I have yet to read The Bone Season, I had to settle for being content with all the free books, TMO sampler included. (Thank you, Bloomsbury!) Tired, we were ready to call it quits for the day and headed to retrieve our suitcase of books and head home.

After relaxing in the hotel for a couple hours, we headed to dinner at the Iron Bar & Grill in the heart of the theatre district and then got lost on the subway for like an 45 minutes to an hour trying to make our way to Rockefeller Center. I felt kind of bad since Christina was humoring me on that journey, but at long last we found it and Atlas, and as usual we had a gay old time making ridiculous faces. <3 Satisfied, we made the journey home, failed at watching Harry Potter, and went to sleep.

Day 1 Spoil:

Anatomy of a Misfit by Andrea Portes

The David Foster Wallace Reader

We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas

Belzhar by Meg Wolitzer

I'll Give You the Sun by Jandy Nelson

King Dork Approximately by Frank Portman

The Mime Order sampler by Samantha Shannon

Pennyroyal Academy by M.A. Larson

Talon by Julie Kagawa

The Republic of Imagination by Azar Nafisi

Let's Get Lost sampler (x5) by Adi Alsaid

The Iron Trial by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare

I'm Glad I Did by Cynthia Weil

Atlanta sampler by Ally Condie

Ghost House by Alexandra Adornetto

Made for You by Melissa Marr

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley

The Walled City by Ryan Graudin

Black Ice by Becca Fitzpatrick

Falling into Place by Amy Zhang

Positive: A Memoir by Paige Rawl and Amy Benjamin

See any books on this list you are really excited about? Do you have any awkward/line cutting convention stories to share?